AIPAC: All for Israel to Plunder America Completely! NO MORE CONNING OR STEALING U.S.SECRETS THROUGH AIPAC & MOSSAD AGENTS!

Listen to an Introduction from Citizen Paul

RABBI MICHAEL LERNER

Rabbi Michael Lerner has a long article regarding Israel Lobbyists and their influence on the U.S. Congress. From the article on September 16, 2007:

“To take an example from these past few months of the Israel Lobby exercising its power, liberals in the House of Representatives in the spring of 2007 sought to include in the defense-funding budget an amendment that would require specific authorization from Congress before the Administration could use the defense budget monies for a military strike at Iran. The amendment failed. Most liberals in the U.S. today oppose preventive wars in general and a military strike against Iran in particular. So who supports such a move? The answer is: the right wing government of Israel and its champion in the U.S., the Israel Lobby.

“At the meeting I was at, every Member of Congress tried to explain why Nancy Pelosi would never let me address the Democratic Caucus of the House (at that time, the minority caucus): House Democrats are too fearful of what AIPAC might do in response. I told these Members of Congress that I didn’t believe them; that I thought that House of Representative liberals were just pretending to be fearful of AIPAC in order to avoid a battle and stand up publicly for Tikkun’s middle path position. But then they began to tell me specific stories from their own experience of the threats they had received from the Israel Lobby people about being labeled as ‘anti-Israel.’ They told me stories of it being impossible to convene a private meeting of Democrats who would want to challenge the Israel Lobby because when they had tried that they had found that every name of the attendees was in the hands of AIPAC lobbyists within an hour of the conclusion of that meeting and many of the attendees had been subject to immediate and intense pressure as though they had decided to abandon Israel (which they had not, nor is that what Tikkun calls for).”

OUR DISGRACEFUL WHITE HOUSE & CONGRESS NOW KNOW THAT AIPAC OFFICIALS ARE SPIES!

WE MUST IDENTIFY THOSE WHO ARE TOOLS OF AIPAC & ISRAEL!

Listen to an Introduction from Citizen Paul

K.A.S.M.:Knesset, Army, Shin Bet, Mossad

HOW IT WORKS:

There is a hidden and terribly effective Israeli government control mechanism — the K.A.S.M. (with agents anywhere in the world where there are Jewish people and/or any people who can be tricked or paid or induced into doing whatever they want them to do).

They are a concentrated entity made up of the very top leadership from the Knesset, the Army, the Shin Bet, and the Mossad — all rooted in the Irgun Terrorist Force.

Listen to an Introduction from Citizen Paul

Ze’ev Jabotinsky Irgun Supreme Leader from 1937 - 1940 Formulated the Irgun’s Ideology

Irgun –– the militant Zionist armed attack force that defeated the British army and the Arabs in Palestine –– that evolved into the Likud Party, but which lurks behind the scenes –– as the K.A.S.M. force which guides Israel’s destiny!

Together, they control Israel’s major moves and are responsible for Israel’s present condition –– good and bad.

They have been extremely successful at securing American support from 1948 through the present day. In effect, this “Junto” controls the Destiny of Israel and, to a large extent, that of America.

One tactic widely used is to condemn any that oppose them with the damning label: “Anti-Semitic.” This in itself is a misconception. A Semite is a member of any of various ancient and modern peoples originating in southwestern Asia, which include Hebrews, Arabs, Phoenicians, etc. –– Palestinians are just as much Semites as the Israelis. The Israeli government is actually the largest Anti-Semitic group in the world.

Also, they are so successful in getting money ($3 billion dollars per year) plus unlimited weapons and support for any and all of their moves, such as crippling the Palestinian people, their freedom and their movement — i.e., making abject prisoners of them — in the West Bank and in the huge Israeli Prison of Gaza.

In this regard, they do all they can to hurt these people — physically and mentally by their crude, brutal, demeaning, and dehumanizing treatment of all who lie under their direct or indirect control on the West Bank or in Gaza.

The great shame of America is the total acquiescence of the United States government to any and all criminal and dehumanizing acts of Israel against these innocent people — whose land they have stolen and occupied and whose people they have either controlled or imprisoned.

K.A.S.M.

We must demand that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton require Israel to stop this cruel and criminal behavior against the helpless Palestinians. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi must also help! Our own American government must stop any financial support for this untrustworthy and dangerous Cabal or Junto, which controls all that Israel does.

Our Congress fears that unless they bow and scrape to Israel and AIPAC, the K.A.S.M. will use its undue influence to defeat them in their next election — which already happened to Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas and Senator Charles Percy of Illinois. And we, the Citizens of America, declare that we will not tolerate any Senator or Representative who bows down to any foreign country and does its bidding for Power or Money — or Fear!

That is the Purpose of this report! To introduce you to the Valiant Citizens of Israel and Palestine who struggle every day against these obstacles. The K.A.S.M. Junto (enabled by the US) has erected and enforced obstacles to deprive the Palestinians of their right to live, to get an education, and to be free to move about in their own cities and in their own country.

So, please join forces with me and my Foundation — Goals for Americans — and together we can save Israel from itself and save America & Palestine from Israel!
Together we can!

Listen to an Introduction from Citizen Paul

Citizen Paul and Yahav on balcony over-looking Israeli settlement

During our trip, we met Yahav Zohar, an Israeli who has worked as a journalist and translator but also commits at least one day a week to volunteering his time to work toward a just peace –– to end the Israeli occupation. Yahav was the official guide for the antidemolition group The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD), an organization that
opposes the demolition of Palestinian homes and unjust tactics taken by the military and housing authority for demolishing homes and granting permits.
 

On the day we met, we had attended a presentation by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Occupied Palestinian Territory. We were briefed on the humanitarian crisis and consequences that need to be addressed:

The United Nations deserves the World’s Support –– it has had little help and has had many obstructions from Israel!

• Lack of protection for civilians and continuing violence
• Closure, movement restrictions and lack of access
• Political geographical and institutional fragmentation
• High Food Insecurity
• Continuous Decline in the Economy and Socio-Economic Conditions
• Agricultural Livelihoods Threatened
• Health-Care Quality Deteriorating; Mental-Health-Disorder Symptoms on Rise
• Access to Quality Water and Sanitation Problematic
• Basic education standards Deteriorating
• Palestinian Civilians at Risk and in Need of Protection
• Children Exposed to Violence and Rights Violations on a Daily Basis
• Increased Humanitarian Coordination Needed
• Gender-Based Impact of the Crisis

Following the meeting, Zohar took us to some key areas where Israelis have demolished Palestinian homes and expropriated land to build new Jewish-only settlements. Despite announced agreements otherwise, this practice continues to make the prospect of a two-state solution less possible.

The UN holds the West Bank and Gaza Strip together –– almost Single-Handedly!

Vladmir Jabotinsky

“Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an IRON WALL, which the native population cannot breach.”

From that day these words became the official and unspoken policy of the Zionist movement and later the state of Israel. Settlements were used from the beginning to create a Zionist foothold in Palestine.

After 1967 and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the aim of the settlement movement became clear – create facts on the ground and make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible. Thirty nine years of occupation and the policy started showing results. There are now more than 200 settlements and outposts scattered throughout the West Bank blocking the geographic possibility of a contiguous Palestinian territory.

The Iron Wall documentary exposes this phenomenon and follows the timeline, size, population of the settlements, and its impact on the peace process. This film also touches on the latest project to make the settlements a permanent fact on the ground – the wall that Israel is building in the West Bank and its impact on the Palestinian’s peoples.

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Settlements and related infrastructures are impacting every aspect of life for all Palestinians from land confiscation, theft of natural resources, confiscation of the basic human rights, creation of an apartheid-like system, to the devastating impact in regards to the future of the region and the prospect of the peace process.

Palestinians and Israelis began the peace process based on a very simple principle: land for peace. Settlements destroy that principle and create a land with no peace.

Did you know…

• 78% of the settlement population comes from Europe and North America.
• Jewish settlers in the West Bank consume 5 times more water than Palestinians – water that is illegally taken from Palestinian water sources.
• 80% of the settlers consider themselves to be economic settlers who live in the settlements to benefit from government incentives.
• Palestinian travel is restricted or entirely prohibited on 41 roads and sections of roads throughout the West Bank, covering a total of over 700 kilometers of roadway. Settlers can travel freely on these roads.
• There are two different laws in the Occupied Palestinian Territories; one for the settlers – civil law – and one for the Palestinians – military law.
• There are now more Jewish settlers in Palestinian East Jerusalem than Palestinians.
• Israeli Jews living, working or investing in the settlements are entitled to significant financial benefits from the Government of Israel. These include generous loans for the purchase of apartments, exemption from tuition fees in schools and reductions in income taxes.
• Settlements with their bypass roads and security zones occupy 42% of the West Bank.
• Before Israel evacuated its 8,000 settlers from Gaza Strip, they were occupying 32% of the area, with the remainder inhabited by 1.4 million Palestinians. The population density was 600 per square kilometer in the settlements to 55,000 per square kilometer in the refugee camps, making Gaza the most densely populated place on earth.
• There are now more than 200 Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.
• During the Oslo era, from its inauguration on the White House lawn in September 1993 until June 2001, Israel completed construction on 20,371 settlement units; a number equal to 62% of all settlement housing built from 1967 to 1993.
• The wall Israel is constructing in the West Bank is four times the length of the Berlin Wall and three times as high.
• The length of the ‘Green Line’ – the border between Israel and the West Bank – is 315 kilometers. The path of the Wall is 670 kilometers long.
• Israel receives approximately US $10 million every day from the United States.

Click the arrow to play the video below

Breaking Down the Iron Wall

A talk with filmmaker Mohammed Alatar

by Hillel Schenker*

“Palestinian filmmakers are really demonstrating a growing maturity,” says filmmaker Mohammed Alatar. We met at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, a week after the premier performance of his new documentary film The Iron Wall, which was shown at the Palestinian National Theater (Al-Hakawati) in front of a very receptive and mixed Palestinian, Israeli and international audience, under the patronage of Mr. Rafiq al-Husseini, Chief of Staff of the Palestinian Presidential Office. It also had a showing in Ramallah. We spoke the day after Hani Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now won the Golden Globe Award for best foreign language film, and before it was nominated for the 2006 Oscar in the same category. “I’m not just referring to the technical, cinematic side, but particularly the readiness to cope with difficult and serious subjects. Poll after poll has shown that the majority of Palestinians oppose suicide-bombing. Palestinian filmmakers should be able to show things as they are. And that’s what Paradise Now does,” he says.

The promotional flyer distributed before the showing of The Iron Wall says that “it covers the issue of the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and its impact on the two-state solution.” Although the name suggests that this powerful documentary film is devoted to the separation wall, its primary focus is on the settlements and their impact on Palestinian life and the prospects for peace. The wall is dealt with in the latter part of the film, and the title comes from right-wing Zionist Revisionist leader Vladamir (Zev) Jabotinsky’s theory of the need to create an “iron wall” between Arabs and Jews.

"Michal" a Jewish settler in the film who explains that she moved to settlement for economic reasons and would move if offered reasonable alternative housing elsewhere.

“Most Palestinians who have seen the film have criticized me for using the settler woman Michal,” said Alatar, “but in my view, she represents 65 percent of the settlers who are only there for economic reasons. If they had reasonable alternative housing at the same price inside Israel, most of them would be happy to leave the settlements. I want people to know that. At the end of the day, we each have to get into the other side’s shoes, to understand how they see things, so that we can look for a solution.” I tell Alatar that this reminds me of Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, of “I and Thou” that has guided me in my journalistic activity.

Showing Life As It Is

Why did Alatar decide to make The Iron Wall? When we started the peace process, it was based on the principle of land for peace. Ten years later, after thousands of lives have been lost and with more and more land occupied, we haven’t reached peace. I could have continued living a comfortable life in America where I’ve been living for the past few years, but I felt it was necessary to come back to Palestine, to show life as it is, and to try to promote a solution.”

“If there is one thing on the ground that really disturbs us on a daily basis,” he continues, “it’s the checkpoints, where we get humiliated the most. However, the greatest obstacle to a solution is the settlements. That’s what I wanted to show in the film. People can say, ‘let’s talk,’ but as we talk, one less slice of land is available for a future Palestinian state.”

Palestinian father and son at checkpoint.

“What I wanted to do in my film,” he says “is to show the reality on the ground. I wanted to highlight how the settlements are the major obstacle to peace. I want people to know that out of the 600 checkpoints, there are only 24 separating us from Israel. All of the others separate Palestinians from Palestinians, and they were set up to protect the settlers.” He says that the equation is simple – no settlements, no checkpoints. There would be no need for young Israeli soldiers to humiliate Palestinians. “The settlement enterprise is not the Israeli people’s project, it’s the government project. The polls say that the majority of the Israelis don’t care about this very expensive project. So why should they continue to be built, and get financial support?”

Using Mainstream Voices

“I believe that the majority of the American Jews are peace-loving people,” he says, “but they lack information. That’s why I decided to present many of the ideas in the film not via fanatic Israeli leftists, but via mainstream Israelis like respected Ha’aretz commentator Akiva Eldar, the very knowledgeable Peace Now settlement watch expert Dror Etkes, Prof. Jeff Halper (though sometimes his formulations are quite strong) and even the settler Michal.” He tried to have decent on-camera conversations with ideological settlers, but it didn’t work. Also appearing on camera are articulate Palestinian spokespeople such as then Palestinian Authority Minister Ghassan El-Khatib and journalist Sama’an Khouri.

Expanding Settlements

Palestinians also learned things from the film. When it was shown in Ramallah, he was told by people that they didn’t realize that so much settlement activity went on during the euphoric early days of the Oslo process. They remembered Palestinian children handing out candy to Israeli soldiers, while Israel was continuing to create facts on the ground.

It wasn’t easy making the film. He was afraid that they were going to lose one of the crew members during a violent outburst in Hebron when they were filming some young, armed settlers. Israeli TV news programs recently showed similar footage when armed and masked settlers challenged IDF soldiers, causing a media uproar. Another time he wanted to film settlers in Kiryat Arba, and he realized that if he showed them his American passport, with the name Mohammed, he wouldn’t get very far. Using his ingenuity, he tied an orange ribbon (used by the Israeli opponents of the disengagement) to his car, and that became his passport. No one stopped him.

‘To Make Peace with your Enemy, Go to War with Yourself’

Mohammed Alatar had a tough childhood, growing up as a refugee in Jordan. He remembers watching Israeli TV, particularly the Egyptian movies on Friday afternoons. He also saw the sexy Israeli women in bikinis, something that his mother didn’t exactly like. Once he saw a press conference with Moshe Dayan that took place at the King David Hotel. He thought, I know who King Hussein is, but who the hell is King David?
He met his first Jew when he went to the United States, in Chicago. He was having trouble with the immigration authorities, and realized that he needed the help of a lawyer. They said the best immigration lawyer available was Jewish. Two days later he went to meet him. He usually said that he was from Jordan, but this time he decided to say “I’m from Palestine, though you call it Israel.” The lawyer responded “Never heard of it.” He thought, I can’t do business with him, but then the lawyer said something to me in Arabic, and it turned out he was an Israeli!” He then called in four other associates for consultation about the case, all Jews. “I had always heard that Jewish men had big noses, but when I looked around me, I realized that I had the biggest nose in the room!”

“The toughest decision in people’s lives,” he says “is to let their cookies crumble. I soon began to realize that Jews are like everyone else. If that’s how much I know about them, how much do they know about me? To make peace with your enemy, you have to go to war with yourself, with your own stereotypical beliefs – the sooner the better. I decided to read everything I could about the Jewish people, and about Zionism. I can’t say I’ve become a friend, but I have a much deeper understanding.”

Using Film as a Medium for Understanding

Filmmaker, Mohammed Alatar

Alatar hopes the film will be shown on the PBS network in the United States, and took out eight minutes to fit their guidelines. Not only film, but satellite TV is having an impact on public opinion. Alatar saw a debate on Al-Jazeira, where Bassam Al-Sarhi asked a Hamas representative, are you ready to accept a two-state solution and to make peace? “The audience applauded,” he said. “Suicide-bombers aren’t resistance against the occupation. They’re fighting the Jews. On the Israeli side people should say the same thing about the settlers,” says Alatar.

“This is not a balanced film,” he says, “but it’s an objective film. It’s made by an open-minded Palestinian, and I challenge anyone to challenge the facts.” Now the film is on its way to international festivals. But his primary target audience is the mainstream American Jewish community.

His next project is to solicit funding for a film that will tell the story of the Jewish people to Arab audiences, in Arabic. It will include all of the Israeli voices, from Avigdor Leiberman on the right to Yossi Sarid on the left. “We simply don’t know much about each other,” he says. “Can you imagine 200,000 Holocaust survivors meeting 200,000 refugees at Allenby Bridge?”

* Hillel Schenker is co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal

Yehuda Shaul, Executive Director of Breaking The Silence is one of the courageous Israelis featured in our upcoming publication Saving Israel From Itself. A few days ago Yehuda was giving British Diplomats a tour of Hebron when they were attacked by radical Israeli settlers. This serious Settler situation needs to be understood and put in perspective.

Just a few months ago now I was there in the historic city of Hebron on the occupied West Bank south of Bethlehem.

At that time, I saw some the settlers, and I spoke with some of the many Israeli soldiers who protect them.

Israel continues demolishing Palestinian homes throughout the West Bank. This photo shows a home demolition taking place in Jerusalem on 13 August 2008.

There in Hebron, ironically right where the tomb of Abraham, common ancestor of both Jews and Arabs is located, today’s conflict between Jews and Arabs is so tragically on display.
Through brute force, a few hundred fanatical Israeli Jews have imposed themselves on the more than 180,000 Palestinian Arabs.

On top of this a few thousand heavily armed Israeli soldiers not only guard these Israeli settlers, but facilitate their taking of Arab lands, closure of Arab businesses, and demolition of Arab properties.

Not only in Hebron, but in fact throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem, the Israelis keep right on building and expanding Jews-only settlements while demolishing Palestinian homes.

The settler population is now approaching half a million. Not all of them are fanatics, but all of them are part of the movement that deprives the Palestinian people of a country of their own.

Today there are in fact more than double the number of Israeli settlers as when the Oslo Agreement was signed on the White House lawn in September 1993.

Time after time the Israelis have broken repeated promises and reassurances that this would not happen. Indeed, back at the time of the 1978 Camp David agreement with Egypt, when there were only about 40,000 settlers and the situation was much less apartheid-like, the Israelis pledged to freeze all settlements and allow creation of a Palestinian State.

Yet what the Israelis have in fact actually done is use one ruse after another to keep building illegal settlements throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Heavily armed radical Israeli “settlers” in Hebron.

Furthermore, in recent years they have compounded everything by a Jews-only road network combined with concrete Walls and barbed wire fences jutting throughout the West Bank. It’s all a carefully coordinated plot designed to make it possible for the settlers to grab the valuable lands and resources of the West Bank from the Palestinians, and in the end to make an independent and viable Palestinian State impossible.

Today, through one means or another, the Israelis in fact control about 40% of the entirety of the West Bank. And the Palestinians are more and more confined — surrounded, nearly imprisoned in fact–within their their increasingly isolated and cut-off villages and towns everywhere controlled by Israeli army roadblocks and checkpoints.

So let’s cut through all the deceptions, all the lies, all the slick distortions the Israelis are so masterful at perpetuating.

The Israeli government has never intended to stop or to “freeze” their illegal settlements no matter what they pledged at Camp David, at Oslo, and at enumerable other times. Moreover the Israelis have never intended to reach a fair and reasonable sharing of The Holy Land with the Palestinian people who have inhabited this area — known to the entire world as Palestine until 1948 — for countless generations.

Bottom Line: Successive Israelis governments, whether of the right-wing or the left have never intended to help bring about a real Palestinian State. That has been the rhetorical facade for sometime masking Israel’s real policies and intentions which are more and more visible on the ground.

Year after year, the Israelis have instead used various kinds of political obfuscations and delaying tactics, all the while relentlessly pushing forward with more Jews-only settlements and more debilitating restrictions, barriers, and dispossessions for the Palestinians.

Furthermore, and this is critical and makes me even more furious, time after time our own government in Washington has not only allowed this to happen but has facilitated it, paid for it, excused it, and in the end helped make it all possible.

My report about all this, entitled, Saving Israel From Itself, will be available soon.

But actually it is not just a report, this publication includes the outline of a serious plan for what needs now to be done and how there can still be a Palestinian State and real peace between the Israel, the Palestinian people, and the entire Arab world.

On the cover, and featured in the report, is one of the courageous young Israelis I met on my trip, Yehuda Shaul.

Yehuda Shaul, Executive Director of Breaking the Silence

Yehuda himself was raised as a settler, and he is a religious Jew who wears a kippa (scullcap). Then he served in the army and saw for himself what was being done in Hebron. He couldn’t stand it. And he is doing something about it as I detail in Saving Israel From Itself.

Even as I work to complete this publication, the situation in the West Bank continues to get worse and yet my own government still continues to do nothing about it.

Astoundingly, greatly pressured by the Israelis, the Bush Administration has even recently cancelled U.S. visas for young Palestinians in Gaza who have been awarded prestigious Fulbright Scholarships to come study in our country. We’re recently interviewed one of those Fulbright students in Gaza.

And here are three short news reports, all published in British newspapers in the past few days and little known in our country, about recent attacks by settlers on British diplomats who were being given a tour of Hebron by Yehuda Shaul.

Jewish settlers attack British diplomats in Hebron

Reuters Thursday, August 7, 2008 HEBRON, West Bank: A small group of Jewish settlers attacked a delegation of British diplomats during a visit to the West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday, the British Consulate said.

The consulate in Jerusalem said the diplomats were attacked while touring the area in an armoured car. None were injured.

A Palestinian security official in the city said one of the settlers kicked the car after trying to open one of its doors.

Tension often runs high in Hebron, home to 180,000 Palestinians and around 650 Jewish settlers who live in fortified enclaves guarded by Israeli troops.

Diplomats regularly visit the flashpoint city to assess security conditions and the role of settlers.

The British diplomats were taking part in a tour by a group called “Breaking the Silence.”

Tours by the group, led by former Israeli soldiers, are often attacked by some settlers who see them as siding with the Palestinians.

The British consulate said Israeli police intervened after the attack and an investigation was under way.

The Israeli government had no immediate comment.

British diplomats attacked by Hebron settler

James Hider in Jerusalem

The Times of London – 7 August: A car full of senior British diplomats was attacked today by a Jewish settler in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron.

The diplomats were visiting from London and Brussels to assess the situation in the ancient city, where around 700 Jewish settlers live under massive Israeli army and police protection amid some 180,000 Palestinians.

The city has been a major friction point, with Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups accusing the hardline religious settlers of attacking the Palestinian population with impunity.

The attack came as British officials were being given a tour by Breaking the Silence, a British-funded organisation led by former Israeli soldiers who have served in the city – home to the tombs of several Biblical patriarchs – and who have become angered by the violence of the settlers.

The diplomats, who were traveling in an armoured car, were trying to leave the city through the large settlement of Kiryat Arba, close to the city centre, when a settler’s car pulled in front of them, blocking their way, a British diplomatic source told The Times.

A “well known settler trouble-maker” then jumped out and started kicking the vehicle, the source said. The British diplomats reversed and tried to leave the scene, but the settler jumped in his car and again pulled in front of them and started thumping and kicking the vehicle. Another group of settlers refused to open the gates to Kiryat Arba to prevent the British vehicle from entering.

The British diplomats called the Israeli police, at which point the settler accused them of trying to run him over and called an ambulance, the British source said.

Nobody was injured, but the diplomat said: “We do regard it as a serious incident.”

Israeli human rights groups who monitor Hebron warn that settler violence has been increasing in recent weeks, partly as a result of the chaos within the Israeli government and partly because one of the Israeli human rights groups, B’Tselem – which also receives British Foreign Office funding – has distributed around 100 video cameras to Palestinians to document the violence, mainly by settlers but also by the Israeli security forces.

The first results of the project were felt recently by the Israeli Army when a Palestinian activist filmed an Israeli soldier firing a rubber bullet at close range into the leg of a bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoner, while a senior officer held the detainee by the arm. The officer this week resigned his command but will continue to serve in the Army.

Assaf Peled, B’Tselem’s coordinator for the project, called Shooting Back, said that, in Hebron, three of the cameras had been broken by settlers, sometimes after they had been confiscated by Israeli soldiers.

Israel’s front-line thugs

Consistent stands against the depravity of the West Bank’s lawlesssettlers are the only way to put an end to their crimes

The Guardian – August: News that leftwing activists are facing increased pressure to stay out of the West Bank is a worrying development in local politics, especially at a time when settler attacks on Palestinians are on the increase. Rather than clamp down on the settlers perpetrating the violence, the [Israeli] authorities are pursuing a path of locking the doors to the outside world and pretending that nothing at all is amiss.

Not all settlers are inherently violent; to portray their entire subgroup as such is as disingenuous as claiming that all Palestinians are fanatics just because there are radical elements in their midst. However, just because all settlers shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush doesn’t excuse the inaction and indifference on the part of the Israeli authorities when faced with the crimes of the extremists among the settler population.

Of late, there has been a steady stream of brutal assaults carried out by settlers against their Palestinian neighbours in the West Bank, right under the noses of the lackadaisical army. The phenomenon is, sadly, nothing new; what has brought the story back into the spotlight are the efforts of human rights groups, such as B’Tselem to film the violence and document the shocking reality on the ground – which is why, it seems, the authorities are so keen to clamp down on their activity in the region.

However, the settlers don’t confine their vindictive and vicious attacks to Palestinians; they are not averse to attacking their Jewish peers either. Two recent incidents amply demonstrated the extent to which the Wild West Bank has become bandit country, with no sheriff’s posse daring to stand up to the rogue elements holding the region at ransom.

First up was a Breaking The Silence tour to Hebron, whose bus was surrounded by jeering settlers who blocked their path and showered those aboard with abuse. Instead of intervening on behalf of the victims of the threatening mob, the police “did not manage to disperse the mob”, “no arrests were made”, and in the end they simply ordered the tour group to return from whence they came.

Then another Breaking the Silence group came under attack from settler vigilantes, who doused the participants with boiling water after confronting them in the streets of Hebron and heckling them with cries of “traitor”, and other such hostile invective.

For anyone who’s been to Hebron, Kiryat Arba, or any of the settlements which play home to the extremist hardcore of the settler movement, incidents such as those in Hebron, or the assaults in Susiya, are by no means surprising. Being subjected to settler abuse and attack is part and parcel of the experience for Israeli left-wingers and Palestinian locals alike. Sordid as it may be, the depths to which many settlers have sunk is merely a symptom of the malaise infecting Israeli society, rather than the cause.

Radical elements exist in every religion, in every ethnic group, and in every country. Human nature dictates that there will always be those for whom conforming to societal norms is antithetic to their bigoted, boorish ways – but that is when those charged with keeping order in society are meant to be put into play. In Israel, the state apparatus should, in theory, be mobilised to full effect to quell any illegal activity, whether carried out by right- or left-winger, Jew or gentile.

The security forces are, of course, by no means scared to act when it suits them. Palestinian demonstrations are routinely put down with excessive force: rocks flung by pre-teens are countered with rubber bullets, tear gas, and – often – live and indiscriminate fire. But when it comes to clamping down on violence emanating from the settler community, a different set of rules apply, and the authorities’ reeking hypocrisy is exposed as endemic to the way in which they view the different strands of Israeli society.

I’ve witnessed the double standards for myself countless times, from the kid-glove treatment my platoon used when evicting the settlers of Homesh to the heavy-handed brutality meted out by the border police in the Palestinian villages of Bil’in and Nilin. What is explained away as “necessary in the interests of security” in one situation is turned on its head in another; softly-softly replacing an all-out show of force, simply because the assailants in question are religious Jews rather than Muslims.

The longer the duplicity is allowed to thrive in the military and political spheres in Israel, the worse the violence will get on the part of the settlers’ lunatic fringe. Giving them carte blanche to engage in low-level crime only encourages them to see how much more they can get away with, in their attempts to intimidate and bully anyone they see as against them in their holy war.

There’s unlikely to be a sea-change any time soon in the upper echelons of Israeli politics, given their tacit support of the settlement enterprise in turning a blind eye to illegal construction, and the army’s providing of military support to settlers the length and breadth of the West Bank. However, there has to be a concerted effort on the parts of all with an interest in human rights to follow B’Tselem’s lead and apply sufficient pressure on Israeli judges to see court cases through to a satisfactory conclusion.

Only by taking consistent and courageous stands against the depravity of the lawless settlers will there be an end to their crimes. The police force and army seem uninterested in calling them to heel, or allowing activists to bear witness to their crimes; it can only be hoped that the legal system is made of sterner, and more moral, stuff than them.

“Gaza is a prison and Israel seems to have thrown away the key.”

John Dugard, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights

• Listen to Spokesperson in Cyprus below
• Listen to Palestinian Fulbright Scholar in Gaza below

15 August 2008

The SS FREE GAZA - One of two boats being used by a group of more than 40 human rights activists from 17 countries attempting to break the seige of Gaza from the sea.

Two boats, Free Gaza and Liberty, have set sail today for Gaza.  On board are are 44 peace activists from many countries including Israel.  Among them is Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, Lauren Booth.

Tony Blair of course is the former Prime Minister of Great Britain who today serves as “The Quartet Representative”, headquartered in Jerusalem.  He himself has said it is too dangerous for him to go to Gaza.   I met briefly with his spokesperson, Ruti Winterstein, when I was in Jerusalem in May, as Blair himself, the floor above me at the American Colony Hotel, was not in the area and not doing his job!

The voyage of the Free Gaza and the Liberty is aimed at “breaking the siege of Gaza,” Greta Berlin, one of the spokespersons said in a report published yesterday in The Jerusalem Post.

Berlin added that the activists “do not intend to turn around” if they are confronted by the Israeli Navy. “Why should we turn around? Israel doesn’t own that property. We have been invited by the people of Gaza,” Berlin said, speaking from Cyprus, where the boats will dock en route to Gaza. “We will certainly talk to them [the Israeli Navy], but our intent is to break the siege of Gaza. We want to get all the way to Gaza,” Berlin said.

The second ship is named SS Liberty and commemorates the USS Liberty that was attacked and sunk by Israel during the 1967 War. The banner is from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Free Gaza Movement people also plan to lay 34 roses in the sea “in memory of the sailors of the USS Liberty,” according to Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, who holds dual Israeli and British citizenship.   The USS Liberty, for those who may not remember, is the American intelligence ship attacked by Israeli in the 1967 war killing 34 Americans.

Preparations for this unusual voyage to dramatize the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza have been going on for many months.

We interviewed, Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, the spokeperson for the Free Gaza Movement, earlier this month by phone in Cyprus.

LISTEN BELOW TO THE INTERVIEW with FREE GAZA Spokesperson

We were told during the interview that there will be live satellite video broadcast that will be available of this attempt to symbolically bring relief supplies to the people of Gaza.  We will provide a link to this here at our website as soon as it is available.

We were also told that if the boats succeed in reaching Gaza they will attempt to bring out the Palestinian students who have received Fulbright Scholarships to Universities in the United States but whom the Israelis refuse to let leave Gaza.  We have since learned however that not only are three of the Palestinian Fulbright Scholars trapped in Gaza but that the Israelis have also pressured the U.S. to cancel the Visas they had received!  How shameful!

LISTEN BELOW TO ONE OF THE FULBRIGHT SCHOLARS IN GAZA

A Young Israeli Who Refuses to Be Silent and Insists She Must Personally Help Palestinians

Among the many wonderful young Israelis I met during my trip to Israel and occupied Palestine, Gali Agnon stands out as a bright spot on many levels. After serving in the Israeli army, this 20-year-old Israeli felt it her obligation to speak out on behalf of the Palestinian people and to do what she could to help them.

A dedicated peace activist committed to forging a solution in her conflicted part of the world, she takes a multi-faceted approach to her mission – bringing people together for cooperative assistance and support on farms, building awareness for the plight of Palestinians in the West Bank, and organizing meetings and gatherings that bring Israelis and Palestinians together in common purpose.

Clearly one of the most tangible contributions she
makes is in her role in helping Palestinian farmers take their produce to market. The Israeli Government does not allow Palestinians to come into Israel to sell their produce, so she has devised a system, where she creates a market for them – offering their vegetables and fruits for sale to the people in Israel, and then transferring the money from her sales to the Palestinian farmers.

In fact, the extensive Israeli military roadblocks and restrictions that I saw for myself make it next to impossible to effectively get from one place to another.

Gali and Citizen Paul at Israeli settlement

Palestinians are prisoners in their own land, facing constant threats and interrogations at every turn — apartheid revisited.*

On Saturday, June 21, Gali asked some of her Israeli and Palestinian friends to spend that Sabbath day helping those Palestinians whose homes were being demolished by the Israeli Government.

Just 10 days later – July 2, a Palestinian worker went on what has been called a killing rampage in Jerusalem. Not affiliated with any Palestinian organization and acting completely on his own, this 30-year old Palestinian, who fathered a child with a Jewish Israeli woman, and drove the tractor he normally used for his job constructing Israeli projects, to kill Israeli Jews – A PERPETUATING TRAGEDY THAT SPRINGS FROM HOPELESSNESS AND DESPERATION.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

(Text from Gali’s Invitation Below)

What would you do if you found a note posted on your door that
Within the next ten days your house will be destroyed?
To build and expand a house, it is required to have a building permit.
These permits are virtually never granted to Palestinians on the basis of various pretexts.
The result is that most Palestinian homes are illegally built, and have standing
Demolition orders against them.

Abed Raba from Wallaje is one of these thousands of people who have received
An order stating that the house he is living in is illegal, and he must present himself
Before the Office of Interior in order to explain why he has built illegally.
Otherwise, judicial and/or administrative measures will be taken against him –
Read: they will demolish his house. The cave where he lives is hundreds of years
Older and is located on his own lands in Wallaje, above the checkpoint near Ein Yal.

The place is a beautiful orchard of fruit trees, also used as
A meeting point for Israeli and Palestinians who have resolved
to meet in spite of racist and segregationist policies.

Obviously, this place does serve the political and economical interest of Israel –
Lands in Jewish hands – and so they are exploiting legal measures as if desiring
to build a neighborhood in order to force him out.

During his visit to the Middle East, Citizen Paul had the opportunity to meet and speak with many young dedicated Israelis that are determined to correct the errors of their Government.

In the following weeks, we will feature each of these individuals for you, in addition to wonderful Palestinian citizens, who are all dedicating their best efforts to bring peace and hope to their homelands.

Listen to an Introduction from Citizen Paul

OUR CHAMPION OF THE WEEK:

HAGIT OFRAN – Settlement Watch

Despite damning details of Israel’s ever-expanding Israeli settlements, this valiant young woman brings us Hope for the Future.

Hagit Ofran is a young Israeli who feels it is vital to expose what the Israelis are really doing to the Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank.

Hagit’s work is a kind of mission she has set for herself. Even as she realizes that the “Two State Solution” may be dissolving from possibility because of the Israeli “facts on the ground,” she nevertheless continually works to expose the facts and offer an alternative future.

She always carefully documents her case: “Israel has tragically continued to break agreement after agreement building more and more Israeli settlements, taking more and more Palestinian lands and resources, perpetrating more and more repression and violence – and now there is the damning nearly 800-kilometer-long ‘Wall’ snaking everywhere unlike anything anywhere else in the world.”

At this point in time, Hagit is in essence a one-woman “Settlement Watch” truth-squad. Her association is with the Israeli group known as Peace Now; but often times it’s clear that she is far out front and pretty much on her own. She provides Israelis and people throughout the world truthful information about how the Israeli Government continues unrelentingly – despite repeated promises otherwise – to expand Israeli settlements, to confiscate more and more Palestinian lands, and to apparently work toward creating “facts on the ground” that may soon make the “Two State Settlement” no longer viable.

At the time I met Hagit, I wasn’t aware of this important cover article that appeared in the National Journal about her in March 2008. Here are some of the telling excerpts – as Hagit puts it:

“The de facto policy of Israel is a quiet transfer of land to settlers and the expulsion of Palestinians. They don’t accomplish that by force, nor do they roll up with trucks to take Palestinians away. 

“The central problem is you cannot really reconcile occupation with the rule of law. If we were serious about obeying the law, we wouldn’t lay so much as a brick in this land. So we go through all these linguistic acrobatics to avoid an unpopular truth.”

Asked why she braves the shouting soldiers, the irate settlers, and the suspicious Palestinians to bring back to Israel news that the public would just as soon not know, Ofran considers the question. Then she answers with a world-weariness heard in the voices of many Israelis: 

Fathi Abdel Majid al-Rajabi holds a demolition order from the Jerusalem Municipality for his home in East Jerusalem.

 
“I was born into occupation in 1975, so it is the only reality I know,” Ofran says. 

“At that point, I might have to find a better place in the world to be a Jew, because it would mean we lost the state of Israel.*

The central problem is you cannot really reconcile occupation with the rule of law. If we were serious about obeying the law, we wouldn’t lay so much as a brick in this land. So we go through all these linguistic acrobats to avoid an unpopular truth.

Find more Hagit Ofran content below:

• Her telling article, “Hope out of Despair”
• An in-depth interview with Ofran about the efforts and project of Peace Now
• Video of Ofran as a featured speaker at the New America Foundation
• An Audio Interview from Peace Now, detailing a trip she took to the Gaza Trip to educate Israelis on the spiraling settlement activity.